IN THIS ISSUE: 1. National Debt Tops Record $16 Trillion 2. Obama’s Downward Spiral For America 3. Does Obama Want the Economy to Improve? 4. US to Hit Debt Ceiling Limit in December Overview The US national debt topped $16 trillion last week, and it was almost as if no one paid attention. At the...

IN THIS ISSUE: 1. September Could Bring Trouble for the Markets 2. The Economy Sends Mixed Signals in August 3. Where Does the US Economy Go From Here? 4. Bernanke’s Jackson Hole Speech – Mixed Signals 5. My Thoughts on the Republican Convention 6. “2016: Obama’s America”...

The relationship between high total public debt and interest rates is controversial (to some); and in today’s Outside the Box Van Hoisington and Dr. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management tackle the subject head-on, in their “Quarterly Review and Outlook” for Q2 2012. They bring...

Waving the White Flag Viva Los Rescates Financieros de los Bancos Contagion is Real It Doesn’t End With Spain New York, Atlanta, and Philadelphia A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. - Douglas...

It really does seem to be All Spain All the Time, but there is a reason. Unlike Greece, Spain makes a difference to the eurozone. It may be both too big to allow to fail and too big to save. Last week I came across a very informative 50-page PowerPoint on the situation in Spain from Carmel Asset Management...

The "Quarterly Review and Outlook" from Hoisington Investment Management is one of the most significant pieces that crosses my desk – I try and drop everything else as soon as possible. This quarter's is no exception. The authors, Dr. Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington, get right down to brass...

In This Issue: An Economy at Stall Speed Is There a Recession in Our Future? What I Told the Senators Escalating Eurozone Interbank Liquidity Crisis: Dollar-Euro Impact? Time for Friends, Fish, and Wine The GDP numbers for the second quarter came in, and there is no way to spin them as anything but ugly...

Long-time readers are familiar with the wisdom of Lacy Hunt. He is a regular feature of Outside the Box. He writes a quarterly piece for Hoisington Asset Management in Austin, and this is one of his better ones. Read it twice. “While the massive budget deficits and the buildup of federal debt,...

IN THIS ISSUE: 1. Obama’s SOTU Criticized by Washington Post 2. Why the $800+ Billion Stimulus Didn’t Work 3. CBO Says Deficit Will Hit $1.5 Trillion in 2011 4. Some New Hawkish Faces at the Fed Introduction This week we will touch several bases. While President Obama’s State of the...

We Lost One of the Really Good Guys Hundreds of Billions in Losses? Really? Some Thoughts on Market Timing Where Has the Year Gone? New Mexico, Cabo, LA, Winnipeg, Las Vegas, Thailand, and Japan I am neither a market timer nor the son of a market timer. I left my office in the Texas Rangers ballpark...

Pushing on a String Let's Shift the Focus An Invitation to an Inflation Party Ten Years and Counting This week the Fed altered their end-of-meeting statement by just a few words, but those words have a lot of meaning. It seems they are paving the way to a new round of quantitative easing (QE2), if...

The Chances of a Double Dip Houston, My Book, and New York I am on a plane (yet again) from Zurich to Mallorca, where I will meet with my European and South American partners, have some fun, and relax before heading to Denmark and London. With the mad rush to finish my book (more on that later) and a...

Introduction Monday holidays always cut into our writing time, so this week we have elected to reprint one of the more interesting articles I have read recently. I think you will like it unless you are a big Obama fan, in which case, you’ll probably find it disappointing. In any event, I think...